Categorie: Democrats

Pew Research Center is out with an analysis of coronavirus deaths. It shows they are overwhelmingly concentrated in Congressional districts represented by Democrats.

Democrats represent 41 of 44 districts with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths.

This lopsided distribution could help explain a partisan divide in the views regarding whether a national shutdown was the right move, and whether it’s time to end it.

From Pew:

The coronavirus outbreak has taken the lives of nearly 100,000 Americans. Yet since the start of the outbreak, the death toll has been concentrated in a just a few places – mostly large metropolitan areas, especially the New York City area.

The places hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak – which have relatively large shares of ethnic and racial minorities and residents living in densely populated urban and suburban areas – are almost all represented by congressional Democrats.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of data on official reports of COVID-19 deaths, collected by the John Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, finds that, as of last week, nearly a quarter of all the deaths in the United States attributed to the coronavirus have been in just 12 congressional districts – all located in New York City and represented by Democrats in Congress. Of the more than 92,000 Americans who had died of COVID-19 as of May 20 (the date that the data in this analysis was collected), nearly 75,000 were in Democratic congressional districts.

Of the 44 hardest-hit congressional districts – the top 10% in terms of deaths – 41 are represented by Democrats, while three are represented by Republicans. These include the New York-area districts, as well as those in the Boston, Detroit and New Orleans metropolitan areas. The average death toll in each of these hardest-hit districts was 1,122 as of May 20.

The next 100 hardest-hit districts, which represent the remainder of the top third of districts, with an average of 270 deaths, also are disproportionately represented by Democrats: 75 are represented by Democrats, 25 by Republicans.

About two-thirds (68%) of the 44 least affected districts – the bottom 10%,

Resolution in Support of Local Control over the Deployment of Wireless Communications Facilities

WHEREAS, in 2018, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted regulations limiting the abilities of cities and states to regulate small cell sites (e.g., pole attachments) needed for the deployment of 5G, substantially curtailing local governments’ ability to regulate telecommunications infrastructure; and

WHEREAS, the FCC regulations limit the type and amount of fees cities and states may charge, set “shot clocks” as low as 60 days for cities and states to authorize proposals, and limit non-fee requirements cities and states may institute, thus preventing cities and counties from fulfilling their obligation to the public to ensure safe, equitable deployment, and fiscally prudent broadband investment to their communities; and

WHEREAS, 126 local government leaders, including mayors, city councils, town councils, county executives, and boards of supervisors, statewide associations in California, Florida, Virginia, and Nebraska, national groups including the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, and the American Public Power Association, as well as 132 public power utilities across 47 states have endorsed Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo’s (D-CA) Accelerating Wireless Broadband Development by Empowering Local Communities Act of 2019.

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Sonoma County Democratic Party urges our city councils, county supervisors, and their respective planning departments to begin updating their telecommunication ordinances in preparation for restoring our local governments’ ability to balance competing interests for the use of the public rights-of-way, and to call on Congress to support H.R. 530 (Eshoo-D-CA-18) and S. 2012 (Feinstein-D-CA) both of which restore local control over the deployment of wireless communications facilities by overturning the FCC regulations.

Democratic Party royal family member Chris Cuomo delivered a pearl-clutching, hand-wringing monologue on CNN last night about how appalling and outrageous it is for Republicans to accuse Democrats of having covert loyalties to a foreign government.

Cuomo, who is the son of a Democratic New York Governor and the brother of another Democratic New York Governor, began his “Closing Argument” segment rationally enough, berating the 194 Representatives who voted against opposing Trump’s ability to initiate an Iran war without congressional approval. Obviously the more resistance there is to Mike Pompeo manipulating the highly suggestible Commander-in-Chief into any more reckless warmongering against Tehran, the better.

But then, without any coherent segue, Prince Fredo began babbling about Republicans leveling baseless accusations about Democrats having loyalties to Iran.

“Shame on you and every Trumper and never-Trumper who voted against this.”@ChrisCuomo addresses those who voted against the Iran War Powers resolution and those in the GOP who aim to divide the country when unity is a life and death matter. pic.twitter.com/kNMnXEeTdJ

“They’re in love with terrorists,” we see Republican Representative Doug Collins saying in Cuomo’s clip. “They mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our Gold Star families, who are the ones who suffered under Soleimani. That’s a problem.”

Cuomo made some sputtering outraged face noises about Collins’ comments, then highlighted Republican Representative John Rutherford’s tweet accusing Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal of belonging to a “squad of Ayatollah sympathizers” for her condemnation of Trump’s indefensible assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Democrats were quick to condemn Rutherford’s obnoxious accusation on Twitter.

Cuomo also highlighted a tweet by Republican Representative Mark Meadows claiming that “Democrats are falling all over themselves equivocating about a terrorist” (which also drew angry Democratic backlash on the platform), and expressed astonishment at war crime fetishist Nikki Haley’s ridiculous claim that “The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership, and our Democrat presidential candidates.”

“So on the right, stop spreading toxic gossip about who likes terrorists,” Cuomo bloviated in a long-winded conclusion,

Even in our polarized and right vs. left political paradigm, there is one thing both republicans and democrats can agree on:

The federal government should have vast snooping powers and conduct mass surveillance on everyone.

They simply disagree over who should be in charge of abusing those excessive powers.

The impeachment circus did one thing successfully. It took attention from the government’s mass surveillance programs that are constantly expanded. As Reason proposed:

If Democrats really feared Donald Trump’s exercise of the powers of the presidency, why would they propose extending the surveillance powers of the controversial Patriot Act?

House Democrats have successfully slipped an unqualified renewal of the draconian PATRIOT Act into an emergency funding bill – voting near-unanimously for sweeping surveillance carte blanche that was the basis for the notorious NSA program.

Buried on the next-to-last page of the Continuing Appropriations Act, meant to keep the government’s lights on and dated yesterday, is the following language:

This relatively innocuous language pushes back the sunset provision of the Patriot Act by three months, leaving its vast powers in the hands of a president who Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden charges with “failure to uphold basic democratic principles,” who House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused of “alarming connections and conduct with Russia” and, joined by Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, says is making an attempt to “shred the Constitution.” –Reason

If democrats honestly believed that Trump was all of the things he’s being accused of, why trust him with the Patriot Act?

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees, calling the Patriot Act “an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.”

Attempts to roll back the spying powers of the government have all failed.

As the Amazon rainforest burns and glaciers melt historically fast, to many Americans, Democrats are failing to rise to the occasion, particularly when they focus on such topics as the Russia investigation, according to Noam Chomsky. “It was obvious from the beginning that they were not going to find very much,” the linguist and activist tells writer David Barsamian in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday in Truthout.

“Trump’s a crook,” he says. “We knew that already—but they’re not going to find any real collusion with the Russians, and [Mueller] didn’t.” This “laserlike focus on Robert Mueller,” as Chomsky describes it, is consuming too much of Democrats’ airtime, campaigning energy and overall electoral strategy.

He believes they should be focused on Trump’s policies, especially his environmental plans, because “Trump’s climate policy may literally be a virtual death knell for the species,” he points out. “We’ve got a couple of years to try to deal somehow with the environmental crisis. It can be controlled. It’s not easy, but it can be done. If you waste a couple of years by trying to escalate the crisis, you might just push us over the edge.”

Chomsky’s evidence includes the fourth National Climate Assessment by the Transportation Security Administration, produced in 2018, which, he explains, revealed that “by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen 4 degrees centigrade [7.2 F]. That’s way beyond what the scientific consensus says will make life unlivable.”

As journalist Umair Irfan explained in Vox when the report was released last November, “Global warming could cause more harm to the US economy by 2100 than even the Great Recession did”—if humans are around to bear the impact, that is.

Instead of heeding the advice of its own scientists, the Trump administration practically buried the report, releasing it the Friday after Thanksgiving. Worse, Chomsky notes, rather than use the terrifying information as the impetus to take action, the administration used the report as a reason to not limit car emissions. He says its attitude seemed to be: “Look, we’re going off the cliff anyway, and car emissions don’t make that much of a difference.

This site offers factual information and viewpoints that might be useful in arriving at an understanding of the events of our time. We believe that the information comes from reliable sources, but cannot guarantee the information to be free of mistakes and incorrect interpretations. IPE has no official position on any issue and does not necessarily endorse the statements of any contributor.

People have no idea that the Justice Democrats really stand for injustice. Their platform is the subjugation of everyone who disagrees and to force their beliefs upon the rest of society. They were founded by Kyle Kulinski (born 1988), who is at least an American, and Zack Exley (born December 5, 1969) who was the Chief Revenue Officer and former Chief Community Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, which was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales as a way to fund Wikipedia and its sibling projects through non-profit means. The third founder is Cenk Kadir Uygur (born March 21, 1970) is a Turkish-American lawyer who has dual citizenship.

The Justice Democrats did manage to get four people elected to radically change the Democratic Party with extreme left-wing politics. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the face of the Justice Democrats who took seats in Congress during the midterm election. They are using women of color to further their political agenda. All four also happen to be Justice Democrats, a group that’s quickly gained currency under the leadership of a handful of determined alumni from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign.

They believe in the subjugation of all people who disagree with their positions. What is interesting, however, is the fact that they do not have deep pockets. They took advantage of the rath building against the government. This is the same trend that put Trump in the White House — throw out whoever is there.

President Donald Trump is promoting a letter against Ilhan Omar signed by anti-Muslim hate groups.

Alex Edelman
CNP

Ilhan Omar has come under renewed attack for speaking about the outsize influence of the Israel lobby, and simply for being a Black Muslim woman.

A poster that appeared in the West Virginia state capitol, for instance, implicitly blamed Omar, who came to the US as a refugee from Somalia, for the 9/11 attacks.

But instead of defending the Minnesota congresswoman, her own Democratic colleagues are piling on – continuing to falsely accuse her of anti-Semitism for legitimate comments about the Israel lobby.

“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar said at a town hall meeting last week.

As if to prove Omar’s point, her Democratic colleague Congressman Juan Vargas declared in response that “questioning support for the US-Israel relationship is unacceptable.” In other words, Vargas – who like Omar sits on the foreign affairs committee – clearly insists on unquestioning allegiance to Israel.

It is disturbing that Rep. Omar continues to perpetuate hurtful anti-Semitic stereotypes that misrepresent our Jewish community. Additionally, questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable. (1/2)

And just as she did before, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a top Democrat who is [content to use Omar in photo-ops, is leading the charge against her.

.@SpeakerPelosi is happy to use @IlhanMN for self-serving “diversity” propaganda but not prepared to defend her against the Israel lobby’s racist, Islamophobic defamation that Omar is “anti-Semitic.” In fact Pelosi joined in the smear campaign. Vile! https://t.co/kFPcOI6DJA

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has refused to recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s ‘interim president,’ calling instead for new elections. His comments have enraged Democratic lawmakers who are pushing for regime change.

Sanders is widely seen as a top contender to take on Donald Trump in 2020, but his views on the current political crisis in Venezuela have put him at odds with the Democratic Party.

In an interview with Univision, the senator – an independent who identifies as a democratic socialist – was asked if he considers self-declared interim president Juan Guaido to be the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

“No. I think what has to happen right now – I think there are serious questions about the recent election. There are many people who feel it was a fraudulent election, and I think the United States has got to work with the international community to make sure that there is a free and fair election in Venezuela,” Sanders responded.

While he stressed the need for international cooperation in resolving the standoff between Guaido and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Sanders said that the United States “must not use military force and intervene again as it has done in the past in Latin America… whether it was Chile or Brazil or the Dominican Republic or Guatemala.”

The interview ruffled the feathers of Democratic lawmakers in Florida, who have adopted a hardline stance on Venezuela in order to appeal to the state’s politically active community of anti-Maduro Venezuelan-Americans.

“He is not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. He has demonstrated again that he does not understand this situation,” Rep. Donna Shalala, a Miami Democrat who represents Venezuelan exiles, told Politico.

The outlet also cited a statement released by the Florida Democratic Party, which said unequivocally that the group recognizes Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

Also on rt.com
Venezuelan military rejects Trump threats, reiterates loyalty to Maduro

Guaido declared himself “interim president” in January, a move that was quickly backed by Washington and a number of its Western allies.

Sharon, who was then Israel’s prime minister, told fellow members of the Likud party in 2003 that a political solution to the conflict with the Palestinians was necessary because “the idea that we can continue holding under occupation — and it is occupation, you might not like this word, but it’s really an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is, in my opinion, a very bad thing for us and for them.”

Of course, Ariel Sharon was eventually succeeded as Israel’s leader by the man who sat silently to his right during that news conference, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the current Israeli prime minister has led the way in making a very opposite case: that the territories Israel conquered in 1967 are not occupied at all. Netanyahu recently told members of his party that speaking of describing lands that have either been annexed by Israel or will remain under its control forever as “‘the occupation,’ is nonsense.”

While right-wing Israelis prefer to say that the land where they rule a Palestinian population that is denied basic civil rights is contested, the occupation is a fact under international law, and is routinely referred to that way left-wing Israelis.

So what explains the skittishness of the American political establishment, both Democrat and Republican, to be as candid about using the word occupation now as Israel’s ultranationalist leader was in 2003? That question has been particularly evident since the election of a handful of young Democrats — Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — openly critical of the occupation, unafarid to call it what it is, and supportive of measures to end it, like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. All three Congresswomen have been attacked by Republicans and members of their own party for denouncing the occupation as a humanitarian and moral outrage akin to Jim Crow segregation in the United States or apartheid in South Africa.

Their outspoken support for Palestinian rights — which reflects a growing unease among young American progressives with unconditional support for an increasingly far-right Israel — has even prompted a new group,

In a political maneuver that was equal parts bizarre and grimly predictable, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill moved yet again on Wednesday to block a vote to wind down U.S. military support for the war in Yemen, this time by tucking a parliamentary procedure into a rule governing legislation that removes gray wolves from the endangered species list.

The measure narrowly passed with a 201-187 vote, preventing any action on the war in Yemen this legislative session.

What’s more, several of the co-sponsors of the Yemen resolution to end the war either voted to advance the wolf bill or abstained from the vote entirely, meaning that they played a part in preventing their own bill from reaching the House floor.

Adding to the confusion, two of the six House Democrats who joined Republicans in beating back the Yemen bill have told The Intercept that they cast their votes in error.

“Mr. Vela’s vote was actually mistake – we are in the process of changing it,” wrote Mickeala Carter, a spokesperson for Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, who voted for the rule that prevented the Yemen vote.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is a co-sponsor of the Yemen legislation, which invokes the 1973 War Powers Act to compel the Trump administration to remove U.S. forces from “hostilities” related to the Saudi Arabia-led intervention. Eshoo voted for the measure blocking her own resolution from reaching the floor, a move that puzzled human rights advocates.

“She is a cosponsor of the Resolution and made a mistake on the vote,” wrote Emma Crisci, a spokesperson for Eshoo’s office, in an email to The Intercept. “The Congresswoman is submitting a statement for the Congressional Record saying that she made a mistake in voting and meant to vote NO on the rule.”

Four other House Democrats — Reps. Gene Green and Vicente González of Texas, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Jim Costa of California — also voted for the rule to prevent the Yemen bill from reaching the floor, and did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., signed on as a co-sponsor of the legislation to wind down the war in Yemen in October. Buck was selected by GOP leadership this cycle to serve on the House Rules Committee,

Candidates from a military-intelligence background are seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 40 percent of the congressional districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2018 elections. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries. If the Democratic military-intelligence candidates won all 44 of the districts in which they are running—which is theoretically possible, if very unlikely—they would constitute, as a bloc, ten percent of the membership of the House of Representatives.

From the State Department to Capitol Hill

The final category of military-intelligence candidates consists of veterans of the US State Department during the Obama years, most of them former aides to Hillary Clinton. These are among the best financed and most publicized of the likely Democratic nominees. In the event of a Democratic “wave” in November, most would find themselves with seats in Congress.

Tom Malinowski, a former congressional aide and Clinton administration official, headed the Washington office of Human Rights Watch for 13 years before joining the Obama administration under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Leonard Lance.

Lauren Baer was a legal adviser to both Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 18th District of Florida, where her principal opponent is Pam Keith, a former judge advocate general in the US Navy and now legal counsel to Florida Power & Light. Both women push additional buttons for identity politics, as Baer is openly gay and Keith is African-American.

Nancy Soderberg is a longtime US foreign policy figure going back to the Clinton administration, first at the National Security Council, then as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, then as an alternate US representative at the UN Security Council with the rank of ambassador. She has spent much of her time since then heading private overseas operations like the International Crisis Group, while playing a prominent role in the Florida Democratic Party. She is effectively unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 6th Congressional District (Daytona Beach),

Leading US House Democrat demands that Ecuador’s president “hand over” Julian Assange
By Mike Head 18 October 2018
The US is increasing its pressure on Ecuador to evict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from its London embassy, where he took political asylum in June 2012. He would then be arrested immediately by British police and subjected to extradition proceedings to face trumped-up espionage charges in the US that could see him jailed for life or even executed.
On Wednesday, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee sent a threatening letter to Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno insisting that he “hand over” Assange to the “proper authorities” as a precondition for improving relations with the United States.
In a bipartisan letter, Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat (fanatic zionist. svh), and former Foreign Relations Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican (fanatic zionist. svh), declared: “We are very concerned with Julian Assange’s continued presence at your embassy in London and his receipt of Ecuadorian citizenship last year.”Julian Assange
Engel’s role makes even more explicit the leading part being played by the Democrats in the drive to lock away Assange for good and silence WikiLeaks itself. In June, on the eve of a visit to Ecuador by Vice President Mike Pence, 10 Democratic Party senators called on the Trump administration to demand that the Ecuadorian government renege on the political asylum it provided Assange six years ago.
Written in bullying and contemptuous language, the Engel-Ros-Lehtinen letter warns that any further “significant progress” and “warming” in Washington’s relationship with Moreno’s government on a “wide range of issues,” including “economic cooperation” and financial aid, depends on Ecuador terminating Assange’s political asylum.
The letter effectively confirms that if Assange is forced to leave the embassy, on whatever pretext, the British government will deliver him into the hands of the US. Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has repeatedly refused to give Assange an assurance he will not be extradited to the US.
“On numerous occasions, Mr. Assange has compromised the national security of the United States,” the letter states. “He has done so by publicly releasing classified government documents along with confidential materials from individuals connected to our country’s 2016 presidential election.”
The thousands of secret US files published by WikiLeaks document US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, » Lees verder

Michael Hastings was the journalist exposing the surveillance state. Hastings wrote about the investigation of reporters by the U.S. Department of Justice back in 2013. He said that the restrictions on the freedom of the press by the Obama administration were a “war” on journalism. He wrote his last story before he died in what may have been a cyber attack. Someone was able to control his car remotely and drove it into a tree at top speed. His last story was entitled: “Why Democrats Love to Spy On Americans”, published by BuzzFeed on June 7, 2013. Any journalist who goes for the truth about the Deep State seems to end up dead. Hastings wrote that “the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists.”

Hastings exposed how the Obama Administration hunted and prosecuted anyone who would leak information about their unconstitutional conduct. Obama even put in prison John Kirakou, formerly in the CIA, who raised concerns about the agency’s torture program. Indeed, the Deep State came into full power under the Obama Administration. It was then used against Trump during the 2016 election. This was way beyond Watergate under Nixon. But the standards have changed so much, that not even Trump can’t investigate because he has to use the very same agencies who will protect themselves.

Hastings died in a fiery high-speed automobile crash on June 18, 2013, in Los Angeles. Today, cars connected with GPS can actually be hacked. It is possible to take control of your car, right down to the steering wheel, remotely. WIRED Magazine has proven this ability, which many others have confirmed. The likelihood that Hastings was killed remotely in an auto cyber attack is extremely high. He was on the Snowden affair and was the reason Snowden had to leave the country and turn everything over to the Guardian in London.

To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.

Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper – penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios – the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King” (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, because technology.

“Today’s tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques,” Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.

Here’s how Warner is suggesting we deal:

Mandatory location verification. The paper suggests forcing social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.

Bot labeling: Warner’s paper suggests forcing companies to somehow label bots or be penalized (no word from Warner on how this is remotely feasible)

Define popular tech as “essential facilities.” These would be subject to all sorts of heightened rules and controls, says the paper, offering Google Maps as an example of the kinds of apps or platforms that might count.

With President Donald Trump fighting against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), his Republican minions have managed to navigate a somewhat tortuous road. They have to somehow criticize one of the many authoritarian organizations that they generally revere. Ultimately, this has proved not too difficult for them; they simply attack the leadership, while praising the rank-and-file.

Democrats, on the other hand, are able to avoid this conundrum altogether, by maintaining their obvious adoration for the corrupt, invasive bureau.

As the Russia-Trump Campaign probe drags on, providing headlines that few people are genuinely interested in, the worship of authority continues unabated. The U.S. military, the largest and most powerful terrorist organization in the world, one that is responsible for the murders of at least 20,000,000 people over the last fifty years, continues to receive increasing amounts of U.S. taxpayers’ money, to the determent not only of the millions of people victimized by the U.S. military, but also of those very taxpayers. Money that goes to weaponry has to come from somewhere, and in the eyes of those who run the U.S. government, both Republican and Democrat, such frivolities as food for the poor, roads, public education and higher education are expendable, as long as the war machine gets all that its lobbyists want.

And then, of course, we have the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Talk about a rogue organization! This is the arm of the U.S. government that is responsible for overthrowing democratically-elected governments, funding and training foreign terrorists, and torturing U.S. citizens and others at various sites around the world.

Let us not forget the ‘boys in blue’, the U.S.’s domestic terrorist organization, the police force. One might think that ‘officers of the law’ might be expected to adhere to the laws they are purportedly hired to enforce. But this is not the case; after all, they are the police! Let them shoot innocent, unarmed people, usually but not always people of color, with nearly complete impunity. But when five police officers were killed in Dallas, Texas in July of 2016, one newscaster said the crime had cast a pall over the entire nation. Was not a pall cast over the entire nation when Michael Brown, unarmed, was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson,